Coin Condoms–You’ll Have to Read to the Bottom

In retail sales, it has to be a toss up between having to regularly clean up poopy diapers in the dressing rooms at Sears, or the time I found a used tampon in the dressing room at Express. Close behind (pun!) would be having to clean the bathrooms at the Christian bookstore. I cleaned those things sometimes 3 times a day after nasty people defiled them.

As a waitress, I could complain about the people who tipped poorly, or ran out on their checks, but the worst was always one particular church group that would come and destroy the 12-top I worked on Sundays at Denny’s. I hated to see them come, but I hated worse seeing them go because it meant a tabletop orgy of syrup and crumbs, and chicken skin, and jelly, and butter, and egg bits, and all manner of spilled drinks. Under the table was just as bad, and don’t get me started on trying to clean out the spaces between chair seats and their backs. It took longer to clean up after these people than it did to serve them, and with all their special orders–y’all, I still have nightmares about them once in a while. Second to them would be the men who tried to pat my backside. How bad are they if physical contact comes second?!

In banking, the worst was a famous baseball player who came through the motorbank to cash his $10k+ check. He had no identification with him and shared a name with about 300 other clients I saw on a daily basis. When I refused to cash his check a) because it was over our motorbank limit, and b) because he didn’t have ID, he freaked out all over the place. In restrospect, it was probably ‘roid rage. He was howling, insisting that I should know who he was, and I should do what he wanted because he was [Famous Name Player] of [Then Really Rotten Team, which is now Pretty Darned Good Even if They Did Choke in the Series Last Year]. Angry, angry man. Ugly, ugly words.

Internally, the worst customer service experiences I’ve had were working for That Religious Organization. The absolute worst, when the wife of a manager called and left 3 back-to-back messages on my voice mail, telling me what a slovenly disappointment I was, and how ungodly, and unfit for Christian service I was because HER HUSBAND had forgotten to give her the information she had requested me to give to him to take home. While her tell-off took over 8 minutes, her apology took less than 2–I never really got over that tell-off while I worked there. Second to that was the family member of the head honcho, who chewed me out for not knowing her voice when she called–on my first week working there, and the first time I had ever spoken to her. Actually, the worst experiences I’ve had have generally been with Christians.

Hands down, the funniest thing that has EVER happened, was a man who did not speak English, passing me a note asking for coin wrappers that was spelled phonetically. It read:

“pleez to give me wrapers for my penis”

And once I quit laughing, I happily gave him wrappers for his pennies.